Participatory economics, or parecon, came mainly from the cumulative struggles of diverse populations trying to win liberation from capitalism. Parecon owes, in particular, to the anarchist and the libertarian socialist heritage, to the most recent experiences of the New Left of the Sixties, but also to every historical uprising and project aimed at eliminating class rule from the beginning to the present. It has learned from successes and from failures.

You might rightly be wondering where this idea came from and if it’s feasible. North Dakota, the only state in the country with budget surpluses and a booming economy, has had such a bank for 90 years and is a primary reason why the state is in such good fiscal shape. North Dakota has the approximate population of Baltimore city – 600,000. Over the last 10 years, their state bank has returned a third of a billion dollars back to the state’s general fund to offset taxes and help with funding public sector needs and that’s in addition to its lending.

The citizens of Tunisia rise up, burning banks and the mansions of the presidents’ corrupt family

The long and short of it is that long-time President and dictator, Zine al-Abedine Ben Ali, has been run out of the country by the violent protests that have been going on over the last few days, and the military has taken charge of Tunisia, with no end to the riots in sight.

Wikileaks has the essential features of a process of “manufactured dissent”. It seeks to expose government lies. It has released important information on US war crimes. But once the project becomes embedded in the mould of mainstream journalism, it is used as an instrument of media disinformation

Wikileaks and their founder, Julian Assange have been the focus of intense media scrutiny for what has been dubbed the “New Pentagon Papers.” With all the attention focused on how they received the information and what it means, most media outlets have overlooked some very important questions. Who is Julian Assange and how has Wikileaks managed to out run both the CIA and NSA? Why has the world elite stood by and let a group fronted by a former hacker release information that is perceived to damage them? Is it possible that Wikileaks has been set up as a shill group, used to spread misinformation on a massive scale?

It is a rough-cut of the first in-depth documentary on WikiLeaks and the people behind it. Swedish Television reporters Jesper Huor and Bosse Lindquist investigate.

There is only one thing more dangerous than a fundamentalist Neo-conservative, and that’s a naive liberal. In the wake of the demolition of the modern, somewhat mythological illusory icon Barrack Obama, people who identify themselves as liberal watchdogs have been left wanting for a new hero.

Enter the Messiah 2.0, the silver haired saviour, one Julian Assange. The ascent and timing of the Wikileaks phenomenon could not be more scripted and perfect. This magnificent digital cloud has literally captured the minds of eternally frustrated people the world over- frustrated by war, corruption and the endless cloak and dagger exploits of our leaders. The uploading of 250,000 “secret cables” threatened to bring down the corrupt Washington Establishment. In reality however, it has done nothing of the sort, bizarrely bolstering the status quo.

Despite public perceptions, Wikileaks does not make the material it receives available directly to the public. It sends the documents to newspapers, which decide what news is fit to print. As of this writing, Dec 2, 2010, four days after the New York Times and other newspapers began publishing scores of articles; Wikileaks has only posted 623 of the 250,000 documents they claim to have released to their website. (2) Neither the New York Times, the Guardian or the other newspapers apparently in possession of these materials have published them either.

Worse, these 623 ‘leaks’ were apparently cleared by the State Department itself. According to noted American civil rights attorney Michael Ratner, “In the recent disclosure, Wikileaks has only posted cables that were reviewed by the news organisations and in some cases redacted. The news organisations showed them to the Pentagon and agreed to some of the government’s suggested redactions.”

Just a little more background on the “hero” Julian Assange and Wikileaks… Wikileaks was started up in Dec. of 2006. Oddly enough, as a supposed “leak” site, a dissident site, it was given a great deal of immediate mainstream attention from the likes of the Washington Post, TIME magazine, and even Cass Sunstein the now infamous Obama administration who wrote a paper on how to “cognitively infiltrate” dissident groups in order to steer them in a direction that is useful to the powers that be. The TIME magazine article is curious because it seems that right off the bat they were telling us how to interpret Wikileaks in such a way that sounded strangely familiar to George W. Bush back just after 9/11… “By March, more than one million leaked documents from governments and corporations in Asia, the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and the former Soviet Bloc will be available online in a bold new collective experiment in whistle-blowing. That is, of course, as long as you don’t accept any of the conspiracy theories brewing that Wikileaks.org could be a front for the CIA or some other intelligence agency. “TIME Jan. 2007

According to an Arabic investigative journalism website, Assange had received money from semi-official Israeli sources and promised them, in a “secret, video-recorded agreement,” not to publish any document that may harm Israeli security or diplomatic interests.

The sources of the Al-Haqiqa report are said to be former WikiLeaks volunteers who have left the organisation in the last few months over Assange’s “autocratic leadership” and “lack of transparency.”

New bill allows U.S. citizens to be kidnapped and detained without trial indefinitely based on “suspected activity”

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has forced the Pentagon to release over 800 pages of classified material documenting “possibly illegal” spying during the Bush administration. The heavily redacted documents include details of a spying program against Planned Parenthood and white supremacist groups in the runup to the Atlanta Olympics, as well as spying on Alaskans for Peace and Justice, an anti-recruiting group, civilian cell phone conversations, and other breaches of spying laws.

Fourteen anti-war activists may have made history today in a Las Vegas courtroom when they turned a misdemeanor trespassing trial into a possible referendum on America’s newfound taste for remote-controlled warfare. The so-called Creech 14, a group of peace activists from across the country, went on trial this morning for allegedly trespassing onto Creech Air Force Base in April 2009. From the start of today’s trial, prosecutors did their best to keep the focus on whether the activists were guilty of allegations they illegally entered the base and refused to leave as a way to protest the base’s role as the little-known headquarters for U.S. military operations involving unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, over Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. But a funny thing happened on the way to prosecutors’ hope for a quick decision. Appearing as witnesses for the Creech 14 today were some of the biggest names in the modern anti-war movement: Ramsey Clark, former U.S. attorney general under President Lyndon Johnson; Ann Wright, a retired U.S. Army colonel and one of three former U.S. State Department officials who resigned on the eve of the 2003 invasion of Iraq; and Bill Quigley, legal director for the New York City-based Center for Constitutional Rights.

Ken Hayes, Father Louis Vitale and Nancy Gwin, the three human rights advocates who were arrested together with Michael Walli, were each sentenced in January 2010 to six months in prison as well – the maximum allowed for the charge of tresspass. The extremely harsh sentences are intended to deter others from following the example of the ‘SOAW 4.’

“Those who speak out for justice are facing prison time while SOA-trained torturers and assassins are operating with impunity,” said SOA Watch founder Father Roy Bourgeois.